Also, it has been recommended that you include better descriptions of the riding mounts, if possible. Will there be pictures of all of these things? Are you going to be including any price lists for average items (such as rope, cloth, etc.) in DS or are we supposed to just convert from the PHB into CP?
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As an FYI, check out some of the maps at Dark Sun Rising done by our very own Cyrus9a if you want some great printable maps for a few of the cities.
Originally posted by Mach2.5
The athas.org team is unfortunately not allowed to reprint any old material beyond stats and such. That means there won't be any guides to Nibenay, Gulg, or Tyr.
Not even basic descriptions of these cities in the main works? Does that mean that they'll never be able to go into detail about the Veiled Alliance or the Elves either? That's really a pretty crappy restriction.. how can you POSSIBLY expect to pull new people into the game if they don't even have descriptions of the places where they're supposed to be playing?
The good news though is that still leaves Balic, Urik, Kurn, Eldaarich, and Draj. Draj has already been covered (and quite well I might add). I think its Brax that's working on the Lost Cities supplement that would deal with Kurn and Eldaarich, but I have no clue how far along this project is. Balic is being given a heck of a lot of detail at The City of Silt by Scott Stoeker (which I would love to see made official to some degree). Its not compiled at all, but it wouldn't be too hard to copy it all together in one file. That leaves Urik for someone to detail up.
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As an FYI, check out some of the maps at Dark Sun Rising done by our very own Cyrus9a if you want some great printable maps for a few of the cities.
I'm checking out those maps at Dark Sun Rising, and they look really good, that's pretty cool. I downloaded the City-State of Draj, but I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet, I'm still working on the XPH, but it looks pretty extensive. I'm looking forward to more things of that nature.
Anyway, it does seem a bit absurd to not allow them to update information to 3E or give descriptions of the land that people are supposed to be playing in.
Originally posted by AthasianDirge
Not even basic descriptions of these cities in the main works? Does that mean that they'll never be able to go into detail about the Veiled Alliance or the Elves either? That's really a pretty crappy restriction.. how can you POSSIBLY expect to pull new people into the game if they don't even have descriptions of the places where they're supposed to be playing?
Not that extreme. Basically, we're not allowed to quote large swaths of text; any flavor we write has to be rewritten .... bascially, in academic terms, we're not allowed to plagurize other DS works. It's a copyright thing.
Originally posted by flip
Not that extreme. Basically, we're not allowed to quote large swaths of text; any flavor we write has to be rewritten .... bascially, in academic terms, we're not allowed to plagurize other DS works. It's a copyright thing. [/b]
:D Silly copyright laws.
Well, do you plan on including these descriptions, maps, etc. in the finished product?
What if we rewrote the things ourself? No quoted material, all brand new? Okay, a lot of the ideas would obviously be the same (Coraanu being the culture-hero of the Elves etc), but if we rewrote all the text?
I think it's pretty vital we have at least an overview of the cities, the Elves, and the Halflings available from athas.org. Othewise people aren't going to be able to get enough information from there to actually run a campaign.
I have been lurking for some time now but this topic has lured me from the shadows.
I would be very interested in contributing to a synopsis of Athas, provided of course that there are no legal issues. Perhaps there is a way to get provisional permission for a rewrite project? Obvioiusly athas.org has some rights to the setting. Could this not be extended to cover a brief writeup of the Tablelands?
I don't think a new detailed writeups of the old sourcebooks would go over well, but perhaps brief rundowns for the flavor of the city-states and key races (great suggestion, Kovar!) might be acceptable.
Or, and if there are no other means to legally do it (and I am loathe to suggest it), but here goes: they owners of the rights to DS might consider making a Player's Guide if they could be convinced there's money in it.
Obviously the most preferred solution would be for the fans of DS to come up with something. The authenticity/consistency nazis on this board alone would provide the best editing available!
Originally posted by mekillot
BTW, I meant the authenticity/consistency Nazi remark as a compliment to the commitment and dedication of the DS fans. this is by far the friendliest and most helpful board I have seen.
Awwww! That's so nice!
Now hush, and go back to work, slave!!!
;)
It's a matter of resources. While we at athas.org {i]could[/i] produce a Wanderer's Cocktail-Napkin, it would have detracted from some of our other projects, such as City State of Draj. The equation basically comes down to "Save people $5 on an ESD, or produce new material"
Which side of that equation made more sense for us is left as an exercise to the reader.